i loved and i loved ( and i lost you )
by blodreina
Summary: 6th June, 1928. They were meant to be married today.


**6th June, 1928.**

Grief and healing, or so Theseus is told, are not a straight line. He's told that it's alright to mourn her still, that no one expects him to be fine every day. Today, though, it feels as though the jagged hole her death had carved out of his chest is still as wide, gaping, as it ever was, as if he hasn't healed at all.

They were meant to be married today.

She was meant to be here. This was supposed to be the start of their forever.

Instead, he's spent the day alone in the house that had once been theirs _( in the house that had once been home )_, trying to quash the urge to drink himself into a stupor. That's not what she would want for him. He knows it isn't.

_What does it matter what she would want?_ whispers the spiteful voice at the back of his head, the terrible part of him that resents her for leaving him. It's wrong. It's not him. _She's not here. She _chose_ not to be here._

Leta has been dead for eight months. It seems to him that it's been an eternity.

There is a crushing weight forming on his chest, vice constricting around his lungs. Dimly, Theseus is aware that these are typical symptoms of a panic attack for him; that he is working himself up, and that he must talk himself down from it, only he can't. Not a vice, he thinks, but that goddamn hole in his chest, widening once more, threatening to split him in half as it had in the days after Père Lachaise -

Père Lachaise. His Aurors, blasted into nothingness with a wave of Grindelwald's wand, eaten away by fire. Leta, not supposed to be there, all too brave, too noble, descending the stairs toward Grindelwald. The panic threatening to claw its way into his throat as he watched, tried to get to her, failed. _Failed her._ The love of his life, burning away in a blaze of blue and ash. Newt's arms around him in the graveyard afterward, meant to comfort, truly numbing nothing.

So many ghosts for one man to carry.

Leta, gone, gone, gone.

Eight months.

They were meant to be married today.

How did she ever expect him to be able to go on without her?

She wouldn't have wanted him to drink himself into oblivion, comes the reminder. He reaches for the bottle with shaking hands anyway. The brandy will burn away the ache and temporarily stitch back together the jagged edges of the hole in his chest.

_Theseus._ There's someone in the apartment with him, but their presence doesn't register a threat, and he can't will himself to look at them otherwise, let them see red - rimmed eyes and shaking hands.

_ Theseus, are you -?_ A quiet intake of breath, followed by a sigh, muted footsteps, and then arms are around him, gentle and all - encompassing, as if the person is trying to hold him together with a hug alone. Blurred vision focuses on a shoulder - dark blue fabric, familiar, Newt's coat - before Theseus squeezes his eyes shut and buries his face against said fabric. It's a little easier if he focuses only on Newt, pretends there is nothing else.

"I remembered the date, I... I didn't know if you'd want to be alone today." The voice is easier to focus on, too, soft and worried. "So I didn't come earlier, but - I had a feeling -"

In the first weeks after Leta had died, Newt had seemingly developed an uncanny ability to _know_ when he was needed and with it had come a tendency to turn up out of nowhere, to just be there ( on Theseus's bad days it had almost seemed funny, given that Newt had only months ago refused to so much as come over for dinner ). The presence of someone else who had loved her had been a soothing one. That it was his brother, all he has left these days, had meant more.

Theseus can't manage words. They jumble in his throat, strangle him, and all he manages is a choked sob against blue wool, tears threatening to spill.

"It's alright." Hand rubs at his back, and another joins it, this one belonging to someone else, heavier and a little more hesitant. Theseus has grown accustomed enough to his brother's American friends to guess that it is likely Jacob - who, he supposes, could be named his friend now as well. Shared, similar grief has a funny way of bonding people, it seems, though Queenie is still alive ( Theseus has wondered more than once which of them has it worse. Leta is dead, but Queenie is a traitor. He's yet to come to an answer ).

"It's alright," Newt murmurs again. Theseus is suddenly so tired, be it the warmth of arms around him or his pain itself weighing him down. Tired, and glad that they're here. He'd thought he wanted solitude today, knows now that it isn't true. "We'll stay with you a while, alright? You don't have to go it alone."

No, he doesn't. It had been a difficult lesson to learn in those first days when he had been driven to drink and the weight of loss had nearly killed him, but he understands now. Still can't speak, but presses his face closer into the fabric and forces himself to breathe.

Leta is gone ( _gone, gone, gone,_ that cruel voice mocks ) but Newt is here. Jacob, even Tina. She's gone, but he's not alone.


End file.
